Greg looking good as usual. This was taken at our party on last Saturday. I really liked that party--it seemed like a really long time since I had seen a lot of my friends. I think Anne and I will have to host some more parties this summer.
Things have been so burn-out hectic busy for the past week (not that I am complaining--a lot of it has been worthwhile) that I have that I am finally not able to cope with running around anymore. I am home today and hope to get a dissertation draft out today (but more likely tomorrow).
Other news--I got the new R/C boat and it works. Like Brady's boat that we had taken out on the pond, it goes faster than a bored duck and slower than an annoyed duck. Drats.
We have been looking at houses, and we have found one many nice ones around Zoar, which is our primary "looking" area. I hope we can do something about a house soon...but the dissertation comes first...like now.
More good pictures from the party to come.

The guys in the Bible study were awesome. I mentioned how much fun it was to go out on the pond near our place to chase ducks using Brady's boat (when Brady was in town several months ago). Well, they remembered that story. Man, those guys are awesome. I got this on Monday, though today (Wednesday) is actually my birthday.

Anyway, I am off to be late to work. After all, I would not want to miss out on the opportunity to leave early. Reminder...Daryl's brithday is tomorrow. Everybody ready to harass him!

This is a picture of Gerry at his current coffeehouse hangout. Unfortunately, it is closing soon. Nothing can seem to stay in that Court St location in BG.

RANDOM THOUGHTS (by Anne and Neil): Neil finally used our new IP3000 photo printer and it is pretty darn sweet (especially considering it was free). Anne and Neil had a good time today at church. Neil was sad on Thursday and Friday--he learned that he needs breaks that involve doing absolutely nothing or he gets sad. Anne loves her job. Anne's old dog's name was Muffin. We changed auto insurance companies recently and SAVED MONEY! Neil's birthday is on Wednesday. Neil is getting over the most minor cold ever, but he sneezes a lot. We have to go now because it is time for bed.

This is from the Zoar coffeehouse this past Sunday. It was a heck of a good show. It is a super-wonderful thing to say that several of the BEST jazz musicians in the area play at your church with some regularity, and that one is the church music director. Too bad he plays with my college guitar teacher's teacher. It puts the bar up really high for when I get to play for the occasional service. Man, one thing I really want to dig into once this dissertation is done is my guitar. Man, I miss how I could lose an afternoon playing it.

I went out riding my bike today (to church and the coffeeshop in Perrysburg). I found this really big bumblebee on the sidewalk and decided to test the depth-of-field tricks I read about with my new camera. It is like being in high school photo class again, only doing it the easy way (with a point-and-shoot, more or less). Even if the photography stinks, it certainly helps me appreciate things more when I get to take pictures of them. For instance, I would not have looked at this bee for very long had I not had a camera. It turned out to be a neat bee to look at.

Anyway, it is dissertation time. I hope to get enough done that I can turn in a decent draft soon.

The winner for looking most like a daydreaming chihuahua goes to...Casey!

(Man, I like this new camera--it is small enough to get into people's faces and still not appear to be obnoxious).

I had a good night in BG, and got to talk to Casey and Randy a bunch. Plus, Randy's mom and stepdad (Frank, who I don't think I had met much before but seems to be a very nice and fun guy) ate dinner with us. I really like going to BG...but this dissertation is hitting hard right now, so I have considered I scaling back on visiting. Part of that is because I feel really motivated to work on the dissertation. I half-felt like giving up my one night of seeing friends to work on it. But it is Anne's crazy-loud girls' Bible study night, so it would be hard to work around here anyway. Yeah. That is a good excuse.

This is Dave Bierhup's sweet 1950 Chrysler "hot rod in training." It is a good thing that Dave is such a handy guy and has a degree in making art with a welding torch...because this car sure needs that sort of attention. It has only 55k miles on it and it runs beautifully. Dave stripped it down and is now restoring it little bit by little bit. Anne and I went over there on Thursday night and had dinner. It was a very good time. Before that was one of the first hockey games I was able to play in for about a month (at 6am at BGSU) and then a good day of work.

Incidentally, this car picture was one of the first pictures I have taken on the new SD300. I really like the way these pictures look and how the camera operates. It is fast, super-small, and takes decent-looking pictures. I just ordered a gig SD for it so I will never have to worry about taking pictures. I figure I should be good for around 800-1500 pictures--and to be able to shoot decent video (really) on it as well.

Anyway, it is a blecchy day, so it will be good to do some dissertation. I am almost at the "nearly complete draft" stage. How exciting.